“Oh, cheer up, Jamie, cheer up, me boy,” said Pat; “ye can’t die more’n once.”
“’Tain’t the dyin’ that rubs,” returned Jim; “it’s this livin’ on when ye’re dead. I’d rather hev my old candle snuffed out first shot.”
“Sure, me boy, sure!” agreed Pat, “but phwat would it mane, d’ye think, if we all got pitched out of this old world without a word o’ warnin’? The angels wouldn’t be ready fer us at all, at all. We’d git a hill of a wilcome.”
“We’ll git that anyway,” Jim broke into the laugh that followed.
“Will, I don’t know as I moind that so bad,” Pat went on dryly, “since I heard Mike O’Larney tell about it.”
“How was that?” asked Jim.
“Will, Mike had a dream one night. He dreamed he wint to the Great Behoind, and while he was there he visited both places.
“‘And how did you like ’em?’ I asked of him when he was a-tellin’ me.
“‘Will, Pat,’ sez he, ‘to be honest wid ye, I like hiven fer scenery; but give me hill for auld acquaintance.’”
“That’s all right, Pat,” said Jim, when the boys quieted again, “but I’m thinkin’ that I don’t want to be livin’ in hell here, like Tim Carter.”